Wednesday, December 23, 2015

There will be a special post-show conversation following the 4pm performance of MDLSX with Kate Bornstein and Silvia Calderoni, Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò of Motus.This event is free for ticket holders to this performance. Click Here to buy tickets for this performance.

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; ten $10 tickets are available for every performance (advance sales only - while they last) as part of La MaMa's 10@$10 ticketing initiative.For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Called "the most truly revolutionary troupe in town" by Ben Brantley of The New York Times, Motus returns to La MaMa with MDLSX from January 7 - 17, 2016, in The Downstairs @ La MaMa.

MDLSX is an 80-minute performance/monologue/ DJ set performed by the
award-winning actress Silvia Calderoni, and directed by Motus founders,
Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolo. MDLSXweaves
autobiography and literary evocations in a wild and fervent paean to
the freedom of becoming, to gender-blending, to a being that cannot be
contained within the borders of the body, skin color, sexual organs, or
boundaries of national identity.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Tonight begins the final weekend of performances for Pioneers Go East Collective's Hildegard (vision) follows the story of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval nun, composer, and philosopher, who experienced divine visions. The structure piece mirrors the scientific phases of the body during a migraine attack, represented through an integrated mix of piercing sound, motion and surreal imagery, to examine the ways in which context combined with physiological processes shape how we perceive and affect change within the world around us. Before you see the show, find out more about the life of this incredible woman:

1. Hildegard of Bingen, was one of the "great creation-centered mystics of the West."

A 12th century Benedictine abbess,mystic, visionary, prophet and polymath known for her work as a writer, philosopher, composer, poet, playwright, linguist, scientist, physician.

2. One of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages.

"We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light."

"Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap."

3. She coined the term viriditas, or greening power, connecting it closely with creativity.

"The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.”

4: She had visions caused by migraines.

"These visions which I saw were not in sleep nor in dreams, nor in my imagination nor by bodily eyes or outward ears nor in a hidden place; but in watching, aware with the pure eyes of the mind and inner ear of the heart.

5. She was an active preacher (unusual for a woman of her time)

Hildegard embarked on various preaching tours of the country. Reform of the clergy was one of her main aims.

6. At the heart ofHildegardvon Bingen's extraordinary creativity was her accomplishment in music.

In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority, intelligence and striking originality of her genius.She wrote profusely as no woman before her. Even though she received no formal training in music, her talent and motivation drove her to write 77 chants and the first musical drama in history, which she entitled The Ritual of the Virtues. Unlike the mild, mainstream music of her day,her lyrical speech breaks into rhapsodic emotion; her zesty melodies soar up to two and one half octaves, leaping and swirling into flourishing roulades which leave the singer breathless.

“All the arts serving human desires and needs are derived from the breath that God sent into the human body."

"When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit."

7. She frequently wrote about nature.

"Glance at the sun. See the moon and stars. Gaze at the beauty of the green earth. Now think."

"The earth is at the same time mother, She is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all."

8. At last she has been canonised in May 2012.

This made her the record holder for the longest canonisation process in history! She was also made a 'Doctor of the Church' - a rare honour for a woman.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

A post- show panel discussion about Pier Paolo Pasolini, the writer of 'Pylade', and his legacy was held following the performance on Sunday, December 13th. A large portion of the audience stayed to hear the panelists,Pietro Bocchia, Francesca Cadel, Mark Epstein and Luca Peretti, discuss the history of 'Pylade' in performance, the artistic process, and the audience experience after this show that has critics raving! Only two performances remaining on December 17 & December 18th at 7pm!

On the history of performances of “Pylade”:

Mark Epstein:

"His ideas, the cultural right, is precisely to involve people, involving people in the dialogue. Pasolini was the last person to want to close something, or the last person to want to write the recipe. You can have the high level of plutonic, or socratic dialogue or you can have the most bodily, popular level involving people- They are just as much dialogic, on different levels...."

Luca Peretti:

"It's important to emphasize, he's not necessarily known in Italy as a playwright... Novelist, film-maker, essayist, public intellectual, and some of these things are known abroad. I mean, he's definitely known in the US and elsewhere as a director. His films are well-known. Many of the other aspects of his life, including his role as an essayist with a say on politics and society, are well-translated. His part in theatre somehow minor. It's not, in Italy, that we deal with his theatre everyday. It's very rare to see it represented. That's why it's great to be here! And it's a great opportunity- even for Italians."

On audience experience:

Mark Epstein:

"I like the connection between corporeality and his materialism and then, obviously, I think the director pulled from other parts of Pasolini- like when you had those first sexual scenes and he's talking about industry and the economy of the city, this classically refers to Salom. There are parts where he took references and placed them to other words. Overall I thought it was successful and the way you embodied different arts that also have strong populist roots, like dance, song, I thought that was successful. Nobody can dare speak for Pasolini, but I think maybe in the spirit of that, he would have appreciated it."

On artistic process:

Mark Epstein:

“One brief thing: Pasolini virtually didn’t direct. I mean, he directed when he was a young man. He directed in 1968 and in the program he very much insisted to have a dialogue with the public afterwards so I think that’s very, very important.”

About the Panelists:

Doctor Pietro Bocchia obtained his master-degree in 'Italian and Romance Philology, Literature and Linguistics' from the State University of Milan, with a thesis on Dante, entitled: "The Semantic Field of War in Dante's 'Inferno': The Interior Struggle (Pugna Spiritualis) in cantos 2nd and 9th", in 2009. He obtained his doctoral degree in "History of Italian Language and Literature" from the State University of Milan, with a dissertation on Petrarch, entitled "The Theme of Interior Struggle in Petrarch's Familiares, Secretum, Canzoniere and Trionfi,” in 2013. He is currently enrolled as a Ph.D. in Italian Studies at Notre Dame University. His dissertation will focus on Pasolini's intellectual formation throughout the Sixties and, in particular, on Pasolini's 1968 works. Doctor Pietro Bocchia has published articles on Dante and Petrarch in peer-reviewed journals and in miscellaneous books (Il Censimento dei commentatori danteschi.Naples: Salerno. 2014, Esperimenti danteschi 2008. Genova: Marietti. 2009). Also, he collaborates with the ''Opera del Vocabolario Italiano', a prestigious Florentine institution, which is working on the "Dictionary of Ancient Italian". His article "The Relationship between Reason and Religion in Pasolini's Works: the Case of 'Theorem'" is forthcoming on the international journal 'Rivista di Studi Pasoliniani'.

Mark Epstein is a translator and researcher in Italian culture, literature and film. He has translated a number of volumes for Princeton University Press, and currently several works are in progress for University of Minnesota Press. He has written on Galvano della Volpe, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Claudio Magris, Igino Tarchetti, Carlo Dossi, Giuseppe Rovani, Alberto Moravia, Sebastiano Timpanaro and recently especially on Pier Paolo Pasolini. His most recent essay, which appeared this October is “Uccellacci e uccellini: vie nuove verso il realismo” which appeard in Pier Paolo Pasolini: prospettive americane, with Metauro publishers.

Luca Peretti is a PhD candidate in Italian and in Film and Media Studies at Yale. He works on industrial cinema, Jewish Italian culture, and Italian intellectual history.He co-edited a volume on terrorism and cinema, and a dossier for Senses of cinema on Pasolini. He is a freelance journalist and festival organizer.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

"under Ivica Buljan’s fine direction and
the company’s terrific performances—especially that of Marko Mandić in
the lead role—it also makes for an intense and entertaining (if
difficult to digest at times) evening of theater."

"Pylade is the tragedy of the
hubris of the liberal elite and the nihilism of the disenfranchised — a
tragedy our world is presently living through again as people across the
globe increasingly turn to extremist ideology....we feel the full brunt
of this tale of cyclical cataclysmic confrontation."

Monday, December 14, 2015

"In MDLSX - created and performed by MOTUS company member Silvia
Calderoni and directed by MOTUS founders Enrico Casagrande and Daniela
Nicolo - Ms. Calderoni is part actor, performer and DJ as she weaves
autobiography and literary evocations in a fervent paean to the freedom
of becoming, gender-blending, being what cannot be contained within the
borders of the body, skin color, sexual organs or national identity."

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Culturehub's REFEST is coming up this weekend starting on December 11th. Codenobi & Wookie will be performing at Beast Code on December 11th at 8:30pm in The Downstairs at La MaMa! Codenobi & Wookie took time out of their busy rehearsal schedule to answer 6 questions for us! Hear what they have to say about their microresidency, Nyan cat, and live coding!

Journey into a net-based world as artists Codenobi & Wookie, Dataf1ow and Blevin Blectum transform The Downstairs with audio and visual responsive elements, live coding, and mechanical & electronic music that plunge your senses into a sea of EDM, J-Pop, Gif-Culture psychedelics, and other sensory adventures.

1. Who are Codenobi and Wookie?

Codenobi and Wookie are Albany, NY-based visual artist Shawn Lawson and Fremont Center, NY-based composer Ryan Ross Smith. Our collaboration began with a haphazard, last-minute hustle to create a piece for an evening of electronic music and visualization at EMPAC in Troy, NY. Since then we have worked to refine our project into two distinct, yet complementary performance pieces: Kessel Run and Sarlacc. Sarlacc was made possible in part through our CultureHub residency in February, earlier this year. Our performance at Refest will draw from these two pieces.

2. This piece started in the CultureHub microresidency, how has it progressed since then?

Since our residency at CultureHub, the piece has gone through a number of iterations, and has been presented in: ACM Creativity & Cognition at the Art School in Glasgow Scotland, Access Space in Sheffield UK, and the ISEA Algorave at the Fortune Sound Club in Vancouver CA. Currently, we are stepping further away from what was a more or less set composition, and incorporating a variety of improvisatory elements.

3. You brought Dataf1low and Blevin to Refest. Can you tell us more about your relationships with these artists?

Dataf1ow and Blevin Blectum are two of my favorite electronic artists working today, so it is a real treat to be sharing the stage with them.

4. Tell us about live-coding. We mention it to people and get a lot of blank stares.

Essentially, it's coding as a performance art. Part of the impetus for the live-coding movement was the desire/demand to "show your screen." The code of the performance is projected so that the audience gets to see behind the curtain, so to speak. There is a revealing of the creative coding process that emerges during the performance. In this way, the audience experiences the performers thoughts and struggles during the performance in addition to the visual and soundscapes generated. The home of live-coding is always a good place to start: http://toplap.org

5. What is your favorite internet meme?

Nyan Cat.

6. What's next for you after Refest?

After Refest, we plan to work toward the 3rd iteration of our collaboration, which will be entirely improvised. This iteration will feature Ryan/Wookie on Tidal (Alex Mclean's audio live-coding platform) and analog electronics, and Shawn will be developing hardware and software addons for visual<->audio live coding collaborative manipulation.